Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham said in July that the “the bricks and mortar [strategy] wasn’t working” to protect the agency’s shrinking number of area Census offices and closure of its Questionnaire Assistance Centers. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Census officials continue to fall behind their goals for hiring local outreach staff, a critical component in promoting the 2020 census among the hardest-to-count populations in the country, agency officials told an advisory committee.

While several aspects of the preparations, including address verification, are on or ahead of schedule, the U.S. Census Bureau said it remains more than 200 people short of its goal of hiring 1,500 local partnership staff ahead of next year’s count. The hiring problems have come as the agency ramps up for the 2020 enumeration that will be used to determine the number of congressional seats for each state, how federal funds are allocated, and to structure economic surveys.

Last week, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., called on Sharpless to resign if the FDA did not restrict flavored e-cigarette sales, but Durbin said Thursday that Sharpless “responded to my letter in a positive way and I want to give him a chance to show that he’s serious.” (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Senators from both parties emphasized to the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday that more should be done to curb youth vaping beyond the Trump administration’s decision a day earlier to ban e-cigarette flavors.

Acting FDA Commissioner Ned Sharpless briefed the senators in a morning meeting that the organizer, Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Illinois, described in positive terms. Last week, Durbin called on Sharpless to resign if the FDA did not restrict flavored e-cigarette sales, but Durbin said Thursday that Sharpless “responded to my letter in a positive way and I want to give him a chance to show that he’s serious.”

Senate appropriators have abandoned plans to mark up two spending bills Thursday that have become mired in a partisan dispute over abortion policy.

The Appropriations Committee announced it will postpone consideration of its fiscal 2020 Labor-HHS-Education bill and its State-Foreign Operations bill. As of Wednesday evening, the panel still planned to take up its Defense and Energy-Water bills at a full committee markup, along with a measure that would divvy up total discretionary spending among the 12 subcommittees.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been heavily involved in House Democrats' drug price plan. A spokesman emphasized that it's still a work in progress. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

A comprehensive drug price bill being developed by House Democrats would give private insurers the benefit of government-negotiated prices, according to a summary of the measure obtained by CQ Roll Call.

Under the Democrats’ draft plan, the government would set prices based on what is paid in other wealthy countries, according to the summary. That is similar to how a proposal by the Trump administration would work.

President Donald Trump has told his staff to avoid a government shutdown, but several obstacles remain to getting spending deals, as well as other legislative priorities. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

The White House has an ambitious autumn and winter legislative agenda that includes avoiding another government shutdown and winning approval of a sweeping trade pact — but a key official says legislation aimed at preventing mass shootings is not certain to move this year.

Both chambers returned Monday from a rather bloody August recess in which more than 40 people died during mass shootings in four states. Members of both parties say they want to move some kind of bill aimed at curbing gun violence amid polling that shows large majorities of Republican and Democratic voters want Washington to act. But no plan that could pass the House and Senate — and get President Donald Trump’s signature — has emerged.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who chairs the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, has vowed to fight for funding for gun violence research, which the House included in its spending bill. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call file photo)

The Senate Appropriations Committee plans to begin marking up spending bills Tuesday, starting off a grueling September that will include debate on more than $1.3 trillion in spending.

All that work will be capped off with a stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown and give House and Senate lawmakers more time to work out the spending level and policy differences between the yet-to-be-released Senate bills and the legislation House appropriators marked up earlier this year.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday offered some cheeky — but pointed — criticism of the United States and its trade practices, telling Vice President Mike Pence he wants to rip down “barriers” that keep British goods out of the massive American market.

Johnson also echoed his predecessor, Theresa May, by stating clearly that any potential U.S.-U.K. trade agreement would not include changes to his country’s National Health Service.

Through its “zero tolerance policy” at the southwest border during 2018, which led to separation of migrant children from their parents, the Trump administration “added to the trauma that children had already experienced and put tremendous pressure on facility staff,” according to a report Wednesday by a government watchdog.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General visited 45 of about 90 facilities holding migrant children in August and September of 2018 and conducted interviews with operators, medical coordinators, mental health clinicians and other staff. In the resulting report, these officials and practitioners described significant challenges in meeting the mental health needs of children in their care, who had been traumatized long before coming to the United States, then were re-traumatized by policies at the border and further aggravated by being kept in government custody for long periods of time.

It’s September 2019, but we’re only just now wrapping up the 2018 election. Voters in North Carolina’s 9th District will finish it all off on when they decide on Sept. 10 whether Democrat Dan McCready or Republican Dan Bishop will represent them in Congress.

The lagging special election was necessary because the North Carolina State Board of Elections threw out last fall’s initial results because of election fraud tied to the Republican effort and its nominee, Mark Harris.

Activists hold up signs at an abortion-rights rally at Supreme Court to protest new state bans on abortion services May 21, 2019. A federal district judge temporarily blocked a Missouri law that would prohibit abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy from taking effect. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call file photo)

A federal district judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a Missouri law that would prohibit abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy from taking effect on Wednesday as originally planned.

“The various sections specifying prohibitions on abortions at various weeks prior to viability cannot be allowed to go into effect on August 28, as scheduled,” U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs of the Western District of Missouri wrote in a court filing.

The James Shannon Building in Bethesda, Md., was completed in 1938. A congressionally mandated report noted that more than 72 percent of NIH facilities are more than 20 years old. (Lydia Polimeni/NIH file photo)

The National Institutes of Health needs a “substantial infusion of funding” to address the “deteriorating condition” of many of its facilities, according to a congressionally mandated report.

The report, released Monday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, recommends that Congress provide $1.3 billion in new funding over several years in order to address buildings and facilities at the NIH’s campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

Oxycodone pain pills prescribed for a patient with chronic pain lie on display in 2016 in Norwich, CT. An Oklahoma judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay the state $572 million for its opioid marketing practices in a case that could foreshadow outcomes in a massive consolidated case in Ohio later this fall. (John Moore/Getty Images)

An Oklahoma district judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay more than $572 million in damages to help alleviate the state’s opioid epidemic, in a case where the state attorney general accused the company of being the “kingpin” of the crisis.

Attorney General Mike Hunter originally sought more than $17 billion for the state’s abatement plan, but District Judge Thad Balkman said he was constrained by legal limits around the “public nuisance” charge.

Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., declared his vision to be “moral capitalism” in a high-profile speech last year. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III wrote today that he hasn’t made up his mind about running for the Senate in 2020, but he has filed documents with campaign finance regulators indicating that he is serious about a possible bid.

Kennedy filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission on Monday, which could set up a Democratic primary race against Sen. Ed Markey. But, also Monday, Kennedy posted a statement to Facebook saying he had not reached a decision about the race yet.